Tamaki Katori

Tamaki Katori
Born	1938 (age 78–79) Kumamoto, Japan
No. of adult films	over 600 theatrical releases

Tamaki Katori (香取環, Katori Tamaki^?) (b. 1938) is a Japanese actress best known for her appearances in pink film during the 1960s and early 1970s. Katori was the star of Flesh Market (1962), the first of these softcore pornographic films made in Japan. With over 600 film credits between 1962 and 1972, she was one of the most prolific Japanese adult film actresses of the 1960s, and became known as the "Pink Princess" of the first wave of pink films.

Tamaki Katori was born in 1938 to a middle-class family in Kumamoto, Japan where her father owned a pharmaceutical company. After being chosen as Kumamoto's entry in the Miss Universe Kumamoto beauty pageant, Katori was hired by Japan's oldest major film studio, Nikkatsu.

Katori was still acting in supporting roles at Nikkatsu when she appeared in director Satoru Kobayashi's controversial 1962 film, Flesh Market. The first Japanese film to contain nudity (director Seijun Suzuki's Gate of Flesh, made for Nikkatsu in 1964, would become the first mainstream Japanese film to contain nude scenes),Flesh Market was shut down by the police and censored before it could be re-released. Officially considered the first pink film—the softcore pornographic genre which would dominate Japan's domestic cinema in the 1960s and 1970s-- Flesh Market became a huge box-office success. Even with the limited distribution it received as an independent production, Flesh Market, which was made for 8 million yen, took in over 100 million yen.

At Nikkatsu, Katori continued playing supporting roles, notably in several early films directed by future pink film master, Kōji Wakamatsu. In his pre-pink days at Nikkatsu, from 1963 to 1965, Wakamatsu made 20 low-budget exploitation movies based on current events such as sensational crimes and disasters. Though at first the work was steady, Katori was barely surviving on the bit-part wages from Nikkatsu. When the major film studios started facing a decline in audiences, they began cutting back in film output. Katori's income suffered as well.

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